Extended Classic: Cosmic Queries – A Stellar Sampling

Artist concept of a growing black hole, or quasar, seen at the center of a faraway galaxy. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

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About This Episode

This episode is now extended with Cosmic Queries about science literacy, Internet intelligence, the Age of Information Overload, and more, featuring Neil, Eugene, and PBS BrainCraft’s Vanessa Hill.

This episode is bursting with conspiracy theories and strange hypotheses, but that doesn’t stop your own personal astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson from dropping some serious science. You’ll learn why the government isn’t secretly using HAARP to manipulate weather and why we shouldn’t dispose of pollution in our atmosphere. Explore where black holes go when they die, the difference between black holes and white holes, and whether we could use quantum teleportation to explore inside a black hole. Find out what would happen to the planets if we moved the Sun, and why there is no speed of dark. Neil also explains atmosphere, air pressure and vacuums, why hot air rises but air is colder at higher altitudes, and why time passes differently on Jupiter than on Earth. Plus, he tells comic co-host Eugene Mirman how to use physics to communicate with a 3-meter tall alien “gummy bear.”